WoW gold farmer victim of real gold bar theft

A hard-working World of Warcraft gold farmer has been robbed of her real gold bars, which she hid in her safe.

Australian nurse Katrina Fincham earned around $75,000 from farming and selling gold in Blizzard’s MMORPG, which she then turned into cash and gold bullion.

Fincham then put the cash and bullion in her wall safe, which was robbed and all its contents taken.

Fincham had the goods insured, but her insurance company has refused to pay, accusing Fincham of fraud and saying that she was converting her money into gold so that it could be purposely stolen.

Fincham tried to sue her insurer, who counter-sued her. To help with the legal fees, Fincham was forced to sell her home and close down her business, Virtual Item Sales, which she operated legally and allowed her to mine gold for customers.

To add even more insult to injury, Fincham found out that her boyfriend was involved with the robbery by tipping off the thieves in exchange for $500.

There’s some moral to the story – don’t convert cash into gold? Get a better safe? Or maybe be more selective on who you date?

Join the conversation

Really no sympathy here. After having had my account hacked once i can assure you there is no worse people in the gaming industry that go about stealing others’ hard earned possessions.

UltimateNinjaPandaDudeGuy

I don’t think they mean hackers here. Merely gold farmers.

I don’t really have a problem with gold farmers since they offer the gold for money form websites. It doesn’t effect my gameplay at all.

Her insurance should be paying out. She had something stolen that she had insured.

That said… Who the hell converts money to gold these days? o.O

Stan Smith

Did you read the article…

The Rich

Firstly, I don’t believe you yourself read the article considering how ill-informed your comment was. Secondly, well I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt / take your trollbait, and assume that you have never played World of Warcraft. Basically, WoW accounts are valuable commodities on the black market – scamsters/hackers gain access to your account through various methods and then sell off all your characters’ hard earned gear to in-game vendors, and then ship the gold gained off to the hacker’s account where it is then re-sold via the type of website this woman used to run. When next you log in, you are confronted with a login screen full of naked characters or no characters at all if the hacker deleted them. It can equate to up to 10 years worth of time spent in-game being lost in a heartbeat. THAT is what his comment has to do with the article. Gold Farmers/Gold Sellers are at the root of the account hacking that RiddlerX experienced. Remove the opportunity to sell the gold, and you take away the incentive to hack the account. Good day to you ,sir.

TheRidDlerX

^ This. I may have been wrong in not clarifying that i do well understand my comment has nothing to do with the woman’s physical bars going missing, and yes, this is more about the gold farmers than hackers themselves, my general feeling towards farmers, as opposed to hackers, are the same. Some farmers circumvent the way the game is meant to be played using 3rd party applications to acquire the most gold possible, even if it grieves players by scooping nodes out from under them for hours, or spamming the trade channel with their product website. While it may not be true, it is my opinion that the farmers and the hackers are more closely intertwined than we think, but i may be wrong. Like The Rich said – the big issue is to remove the opportunity for gold to be sold.

Stan Smith

I didn’t read the article? Where the f*** does it say in the article about what you just told me? Thanks for the info.